Tag: strangers

Hi there. My name is Robert. I live in a fairly populated city in the eastern US. I would consider myself to be a night owl, and it’s gotten me into trouble more times than I can count. Now, when I say trouble, I don’t just mean not getting enough sleep before an important exam or something along those lines. No, I mean the times where I actually place myself into potential danger. This is what I’ll be focusing on. More specifically, I’ll be focusing on an event which happened a few nights ago.

It was about 1:30 AM, and I had just come off of a migraine that I was suffering through. I had lain in bed all day, and wanted to do something. So, I decided I would go out for a drive. I took a quick shower, then went out to my car.

I wasn’t really sure where it was I was going to go. I just started up my music, and started leaving my subdivision. I got out onto the main road, and decided I would drive to a place fairly close that I had not been to before. I knew that it had some hills, and figured it would be a fairly entertaining drive. I turned on to a road I knew fairly well, and figured I would drive north to an area less populated. I guess you could consider it a “country” area. The houses were all spread out, and there weren’t many stores, gas stations, etc.

Once I got about three miles beyond the part of the road I knew, I stopped at a four-way stop. I checked my surroundings, and proceeded. Because it was dark, I did not realize until I pulled onto it; the road had turned to dirt. At this point, the forest got pretty heavy as well. The road was fairly wide, consisting of what seemed to be three lanes. I assumed this was because there were lots of driveways, which were not too safe to pull into because of the hills. The second it turned to dirt, I decided I would turn around a little further up, as I was not comfortable driving on it.

Before long, I came across a large branch in the road, which I was not able to drive around. I stopped my car about fifteen feet away from it. It immediately seemed strange to me because it was not windy at all. The odds of a branch falling were very low. It also looked very unnatural, as if it were thrown there, rather than having fallen. Furthermore, it seemed as if the branch had been dead for quite some time. The leaves looked dry, and the branch looked rotted. It just seemed as if it didn’t belong there.

Because I’ve heard many stories about this type of thing being a trap, I was on edge right away. Within seconds of looking the branch over, I shifted into reverse, and quickly turned around. While I still had my foot on the brake before shifting into drive, the red light illuminated the area behind me. I looked in the mirror one last time before driving away. Believe me or not, but I know what I saw. Two people began climbing out of the forest on each side of the branch. They were both wearing dark clothes, and I believe they had white masks on. It was either this or that both of them were very pale. I don’t know for sure, as I only saw them for a second. In horror, I slammed my foot on the gas, and quickly drove back down the dirt road.

I don’t know what those people planned to do, but obviously, they did not have good intentions. They probably placed the branch there, expecting someone to get out of his or her car to move it out of the way. This is when they’d strike. Think what would have happened if I lived further down that road. I would’ve had to move it to proceed. I did not call the police because I figured they would’ve left after I sped away the way I did. The police would’ve shown up to see nothing out of the ordinary.

While I was fortunate, someone else may not have been. I want to turn this into an example. Remember to act with caution when getting out of your car at night. There are people in this world with evil intentions. While something may seem like a natural occurrence, it may not be. You can’t assume “Oh, that wouldn’t happen to me.” just because the odds are so low. I had never expected something like this to occur. It could happen to anyone. Be mindful of this. You never know what danger is waiting for you when you simply get out of your car to move a branch out of your way.

Now, before I get into the episode, here are some facts you need to know, for context:

Although my Twitter account is public, it’s also anonymous, as I have no personal information on it, other than my age, and I’m 18. Also, I’m very used to seeing memes and ironic posts on Twitter. Anyways, onto the story.

On July 29, 2017, I was initially having a normal Saturday; I woke up at noon, lounged around, played Zelda on my Switch, etc. I was also browsing social media, as I had a lot of Twitter acquaintances who, much like me, were into gaming. After I had some dinner, I went back on Twitter to see what people were up to, and if any gaming-related announcements were made.

As I was casually scrolling through my timeline, I got a notification, and I instinctively checked to see what it was. And what I saw really caught me off guard.

One of my Twitter acquaintances (let’s call him Jay) posted a tweet that said, “Sorry, 4 my inconvenient, Because of the recent sex-trafficking. My Client is back by morning, noon, or afternoon.” At first, I was just confused. Then, a few minutes passed, and I was slowly starting to feel creeped out; Jay has never tweeted at me like that before, let alone anything about sex-trafficking.

I decided to screenshot the Tweet and post it, just to see what my acquaintances would say about it. I won’t share all the details, but quite a few people came along and replied to me, talking about how weird the situation was. Although some of them advised me to block Jay, I curiously decided to reply to the strange tweet, asking Jay for the context of it.

About 10-15 minutes went by before Jay answered me, though it felt like an eternity, since I only became more unsettled over time. Jay answered, “this context of me being tracked down by a malicious Twitter account,” and that sent chills down my spine. He also told me that he has to make his Twitter account private at night to protect himself, and that the ordeal began at around noon on the previous day, when he used #Twitter on a tweet and the malicious account retweeted it. Furthermore, Jay gave me the malicious account’s Twitter handle, and curiosity made me take a look at it.

This strange account’s name tag was “Penelope Thomson,” but it’s twitter handle was a random assortment of numbers and letters, and its pinned Tweet (and only Tweet) said, “I just want to f**k! Love it in my or your car” with a shortened link, which I obviously didn’t click on. I scrolled through this account, and it’s full of retweets from random users, including the aforementioned tweet from Jay with #Twitter on it. Seeing that piece of evidence made me shiver.

After reporting “Penelope” twice, I finally decided to block her. I’ve never blocked people before, and I prefer to have an empty Blocked Accounts list, but something told me that blocking “Penelope” was absolutely necessary. I honestly felt like I dodged a bullet, but at the same time, I felt sick to my stomach. I’ve never had a creepy experience on the Internet until that night, and I still don’t know the answer to this question:

Out of all the users on Twitter, why did “Penelope” hack Jay to Tweet at me? Why me?

I feel a little relieved to have her blocked, but I’m fearful that blocking her may not be enough, since she’s also a hacker. Whoever “Penelope” is, I really hope that they’re not really supporting sex-trafficking; that’s absolutely disgusting, and I hope “Penelope” is stopped as soon as possible.

Anyone who lives in Louisville, Kentucky will be knowledgable are the old tuberculosis hospital where hundreds of unlucky people succumbed to the disease in the early 1900s. I’m talking about none other than Waverly Hills…

Everything about Waverly will send chills down your spine.. from the room where a nurse hung herself… to the body chute. Yes you heard me right… a body chute.

They would slide the bodies down a narrow, dark chute to be incinerated and disposed off… It’s always when going down there… when I got freaked out.

I’ve never believed in ghosts… and to be honest… I still don’t. I’ve been skeptical my whole life, and despite being raised in a strong Christian household, I was never quite religious either. To me, it was always the things you could actually see which were the scariest.

As you can imagine, with the antibiotic drug Streptomycin being used to treat TB, there is no use for Waverly other than to offer overly-expensive tours to take the money out of the pockets of the most adventurous souls.

I was on one of these tours in late October. It started at 10 pm, so it was already cold and dark. I was surprised my Mom had let me go… despite having school bright and early the next day.

We kept walking, learning the grim history of all the rooms and halls, wondering about all the deaths that happened in the rooms. We were given some time on the third floor to explore around on our own, as long as we didn’t go outside or go to another floor. My Mom had to tie her shoes, and to my joy, she had told me I could go ahead.

I bravely marched through the narrow, dark corridors until my nine-year old ears heard a whisper, “Hey Kid! Come here.”

“Hello?”

The voice was of a man, coming from a room off to my left, but I couldn’t see him in the pitch blackness of the room, and I was too nervous to shine my flashlight in.

“I need your help? Can you help me?” He asked.

I got a bad feeling about this, remembering all the safety lessons we’d recieved on not trusting strangers if they asked for our help or had some candy… so I just asked, “Are you part of the tour?”

“Yeah… the tour guide… you remember her right?”

“Yeah…”

“She’s one of my closet friends…”

I decided that the tour guide might be mad at me if I didn’t help out friend… so I walked inside of the abyss of darkness.

Just as he covered my mouth with his hand, I let out a scream… I felt my body being dragged as I fell into a sea of darkness…. or for a less poetic explanation… I passed out.

I woke up at the hospital. They’d checked to see if I was healthy, and let me go. My mom told me later on that they’d heard me scream, then found me at the top of the body chute passed out, as if someone was about to push me in.

I decided not to tell her about the man. I told her I’d been messing around, and fell right there at the entrance of the chute. I don’t think she really believed me, but it was okay, and we moved on.

Two days later, on the news, we heard of a man homeless man trespassing in Waverly Hills fot weeks… he had been caught and arrested. My heart tells me that was the man.

This story took place back when I was still a little girl in the 2nd grade. This story isn’t really scary is kinda funny but a little freaky. Forgive me if I can’t recall all of the minor details since its been about 10 years since this incident.

To set the scene, i’ve grown up in a fairly upper middle class neighborhood in southern california, so the threats of weirdos and crimes going on was nearly non- existent.

Everyone was sheltered and to be honest we (as in the kids) thought everyone was nice and bad guys were just something that happened in movies.

Anyways, both my parents work, so each day I have to stay at an after school program called Kids Care where basically they monitor you until your parents pick you up. I usually got picked up at 6 pm so my friends and I used our time up by playing soccer out on the field.

The field is set up as a giant rectangle but the right side of the edge of the field is a short slope with lots of greenery and on top there are a line of houses over looking the field and the school in general.

Everyday me and about 10 other people or so would go out to the field where we were supposed to be monitored by an adult but since all the so called “teachers” were all in the main building no one was watching us.

This was their fault cause they are supposed to watch us all the time especially when the sun would set early from daylight savings.

On one particular day it was 5 in the evening and the sun was starting to go down. We went out to the field and none of the teachers followed us.

We started playing soccer as usual until by best friend got hurt and began bleeding a bit so most of us ran to get a bandaid or two from the classroom that was half way across the school.

I however, stayed with my friend and sat down beside her. I got a eerie feeling as we were alone in the middle of an empty field and by now the sun was just a thin line on the horizon.

I’ve always been a real paranoid person and the whole time they were gone I kept looking behind my back and doing 360s because I could feel that nasty feeling in my stomach grow. When they finally came back we went back to playing soccer like usual. The feeling still wasn’t gone.

My friend was running towards the goal and we were all cheering her on until she stopped mid way and her expression blanked as she stared at the top of the small slope to the right.

I thought she had seen a dog or something so i looked over but didn’t see anything. I stood and asked “what? whats going on?”

She whispered just to the point where i could hear it “there’s a man watching from the bushes” I spun around and surely there was a man probably in his 40s wearing a red shirt with a big ol’ beard holding a big camera smiling and watching us from a freaking bush. WhAt tHe hEll.

I nearly screamed, we saw the flash from the camera go off and he suddenly jumped up and ran in the direction of the houses.

The last thing I saw him do was jump the fence in to someone’s backyard. By now, we were all screaming like banshees as we frantically looked around for a teacher.

nopity nope nope no teacher.

We continued our banshee screams as we ran to the main building. When we got there all the teachers were already out of the classrooms trying to find the source of the screaming.

My friend and I were the most shaken and we soon figured out that none of the other kids saw the man and they were just freaked out that we were freaked out. It wasn’t until recently I realized that this man was obviously planning to do something with those photos.

At the time we were just scared from the sight of the police were called immediately and the best part is that we got pulled out of the pathetic excuse for an art class and got to talk to the police which was so cool for a second grader at the time. We both gave him a description of the man.

We later found out that they never caught the creeper pedo man. Thankfully he never showed up again, or rather, we never saw him.

This happened to me very recently and though I’m okay it’s still scary to think about. I had to get gas for my car as my dad had always drilled the rule of “never let your car get below half a tank of gas!” into my head since before I was able to drive. The gas station in town was roped off due to the pumps not working. Unfortunately this is a fairly regular occurrence now that the gas station got new gas pumps and all the bugs haven’t been worked out yet.

There is another gas station on the outskirts of town that I decided to go to instead. The gas station wasn’t completely packed but it was rather full. I was able to find a spot that was open but I was behind a large truck. This didn’t bother me as I figured that I would back out of the spot when I was done and get out of the parking lot that way.

I got out of the car and begin fueling when I notice this old beat up burgundy colored car slowly starts circling the gas station. I notice that there were two people in the car and both looked to be in their late sixties to early seventies. Both looked down on their luck with torn and very ratty looking clothing, unkempt beards, and hair sticking out in every which direction. I then notice how they’re looking at me as if I’m a piece of steak and they are starving wolves. I can feel my blood pressure rise and keep an eye on them when they park their car right behind me effectively boxing me in. They parked horizontally so there were no spaces for me to get in and out.

My knowledge of the Spanish language is very limited but I could hear them talk and made out the words of “She’ll do” and “Get her.”

By now flight or fight is starting to kick in. My first thought was to run the risk of making a complete idiot out of myself by running into the gas station building screaming for help and flagging down a clerk. I thought to myself that I shouldn’t panic and pretend like I couldn’t understand them and then form a quick plan of escape.

They both went inside the building for who knows what while occasionally looking over in my direction to see if I was still there. I immediately stopped pumping the gas and went to get inside my car and lock the doors when I saw two professional looking men come out of the gas station. I decided to take my chance and went to them explaining what had happened and asking them for their help. I told them what the two scruffy looking men had said and what they had done.

The two professional looking men both agreed to help me. One of the men told me to stay by their car while the other would go inside and speak to a clerk.

Fortunately for me luck was also on my side when the owner of the big truck moved his vehicle so I would be able to get out of the gas station.

The man I was with told me to take the back way home and not to take the main route home. Taking the main route home means a straight line into town where it’s very easy to be spotted and followed. Taking the back roads adds on twenty minutes of time but it also means being able to blend into traffic easily. The man also said he’d keep an eye on my car until I was out of sight to make sure the men weren’t able to follow me.

I thanked the man profusely, got into my car, locked all the doors, and got out of there as quickly as I could without causing an accident. On the way out I could see the two scruffy looking men frowning and glaring at my car as I was pulling away.

I don’t know what those two men wanted from me or to do to me but I’m glad that I didn’t find out.